Ordinarily, a clean room is installed in medical facilities such as hospitals, in which medicines are prepared. In medical facilities, a room in the building is set aside as a clean room, the air is cleaned by an air conditioner and the pressure adjusted to make it a clean room. When ordinary medicines are prepared in the clean room, the clean room is positively pressurized so that outside air containing bacteria and dust does not enter.
On the other hand, when preparing an anti-cancer drug (a powerful medicine), the clean room is negatively pressurized. Namely, the air inside the clean room where preparation of the anti-cancer drug is performed becomes air containing ingredients of the anti-cancer drug, and the air is prevented from leaking out to outside of the room. However, this increases the possibility of workers inside the clean room coming into contact with air containing the anti-cancer drug ingredient and inhaling the air.
This increases the need to install a separate clean bench within which anti-cancer drugs are prepared.
A common clean bench is equipped with a work table within which is installed a work space, a work opening formed on the front side of the work space, an open/close shutter which opens/closes the work opening, and an air conditioner which purifies and adjusts the pressure of the air of the work space. When medicine is prepared using this clean bench, the worker opens the open/close shutter appropriately, inserts his hands through the work opening into the work space, and prepares the medicine on the work table.
In preparing an anti-cancer drug using the clean bench, if the interior of the work space is negatively pressurized, it becomes difficult for the air containing ingredients of the anti-cancer drug inside the work space to leak outside. However, because the outside air comes into the work space, in order to decontaminate the air from bacteria, dust, etc., a clean bench still needs to be installed in the clean room.
A pre-room is installed adjacent to the clean room, in which an air shower and an aseptic hand washer are installed. Each worker enters the clean room after dust removal and sterilization in the pre-room.
However, the prior art technology has the following problems.
(A) Because a room in the building is itself set aside as a clean room, the clean room becomes unnecessarily large, and in order to maintain the air inside the clean room at a high level of purity, the air purification apparatus is necessarily large. Also, it takes time to exhaust the air from within the clean room, increasing operating costs.
(B) Furthermore, if a clean bench is separately installed in a clean room, a pre-room for preparing to enter the clean room is separately installed, in which an air shower is installed, making the installation cost to be very high.
(C) In general hospitals, in order to efficiently perform a series of medical functions, including the preparation of medicine, a request is made to install a clean room where medicine preparation can be performed for each clinical section and further for each hospital ward or each floor of each ward if there is an inpatient facility. However, this is often impossible to realize in consideration of space and cost.
On the other hand, JP 2000-320872 discloses a clean room equipped with a pre-room, a positively-pressurized room, a negatively-pressurized room, a safe cabinet (clean bench), and an air circulation system.
The air shower device and a aseptic hand washer are installed in the pre-room, the positively-pressurized room adjoins the pre-room, the negatively-pressurized room adjoins the positively-pressurized room, and the safe cabinet is installed in the negatively-pressurized room. Air inside the positively-pressurized room, the negatively-pressurized room, and the safe cabinet is pressure controlled by the air circulation system. The air shower installed in the pre-room is separate from the air circulation system.
It is presumed that a room in the building itself is set aside as the clean room, in which case the same problems as those cited in (A)˜(C) will occur. If the clean room is installed independently within a building, although the problems may improve somewhat, the following problems exist.
(a) Because the negatively-pressurized room is installed separate from the positively-pressurized room and the pre-room for performing an air shower is installed separate from the positively-pressurized room and negatively-pressurized room, miniaturization of the clean room has a limit, and the air circulation system may become large.
(b) Furthermore, because the air shower device becomes necessary in the pre-room separate from the air circulation system, the manufacturing cost of the clean room becomes very high.
(c) Because the worker needs to move among rooms of the pre-room, the positively-pressurized room, and the negatively-pressurized room, the workload increases.
The objective of the present invention is to install a clean room equipped with a work room and an independent clean bench inside a building, to have its air shower generated by an air conditioning system, to make the work room positively pressurized or negatively pressurized to enable the worker inside the work room to perform medicine preparation using the clean bench, and to realize miniaturization and cost reduction, etc.